Between the Census of 1850 and the
Census of 1860, the number of Italians emigrating to America jumped by 7,000, so that on
the eve of the Civil War just over 11,000 Americans listed themselves as having been born
in Italy. Many of them came to escape from stifling poverty, only to find it pursued them
to the crowded cities of the East Coast of the United States; still others came to find
freedom from the oppression of the Roman Catholic Church, which was trying to enforce
orthodoxy upon its believers. Most Italians were simply looking for peace, for their
homeland was torn by wars of its own.
New York City was the destination of the
majority of Italian immigrants. There, they found many of their own people already
established; the language was familiar and, despite the opposition of the Catholic Church
in America, the old religious practices were still being observed. They had their own
schools, when they could afford them, and their own newspapers; Francesco Secchi de
Casale, a political activist who escaped from Italian authorities just in time, found
refuge in New York and funded the publication of L'Europee-Americano, the first
periodical to be printed both in English and Italian, the purpose of which was to keep
people informed of events in Italy and Europe-and to make written attacks on the Church
authorities, which got Casale in trouble. He felt so strongly about keeping his people
informed, however, that when the first publication failed, he pawned his watch and some of
his wife's jewelry to fund what is said to be the first important Italian language weekly
published in the United States, L'Eco d'Italia, which remained in circulation
until the end of the century.
Italians in New York had to deal with a number
of social issues, including poor housing and schools, medical difficulties, and poverty.
Again, their hero was Casale; he raised money to start an evening school for Italians in
the Five Points slum, seeing to it the children were taught to read, write, do
mathematics, and study the history of Italy and America. Casale failed to get widespread
backing for a project dear to his heart, however; he very much wanted to find a way to
move Italian immigrants out to the farmlands beyond the cities, since farming was what
they had done in the Old Country. When he could not get the governments of Italy or the
United States to back his plans, he turned to private businesses; finally by the 1880s
Italian farmers were back on the land in a sense, when American businessman Charles Landis
donated land near Vineland, New Jersey, to start a farming cooperative.
Italian involvement in the Civil War was
intense and passionate. Their militant hero back home, Giuseppe Garibaldi, was their
inspiration; his republican views led many Italians to back the Union cause, though they
were represented in the Southern armies as well. Francesco Casale spearheaded the
formation of an Italian Legion, and later the founding of the Italian Garibaldi Guard, and
was joined by many like-minded Italians: Luigi Tinelli, a former consul to Portugal and an
industrialist, had experience as a militia commander; Francesco Spinola recruited four
regiments in New York, and was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to be their general;
and Count Luigi Palma di Cesnola, a veteran of the Crimean War, established a military
academy in New York City, where many young Italians learned the art of war and later
served in the Union army. Their stories are fascinating and colorful. Cesnola, for
instance, was left wounded and pinned under his horse after fighting JEB Stuart's cavalry
at Aldie, Virginia, in June 1863; while a prisoner of war, he agitated for better
treatment for prisoners, to the point that his captors put him in charge of the prison
commissary at Belle Isle. Spinola, finding his men of the Spinola Empire Brigade
outnumbered six to one in a battle, ordered them to fix bayonets-and they charged,
scattering the amazed Southerners before them in disorder.

The Garibaldi
Guard

The Garibaldi Guard was the nickname of the 39th New York
Infantry, a regiment of Italian-Americans recruited mostly from New York City under the
auspices of Francesco Casale and other Italian leaders in the North. Most of the members
of this regiment were men who had fought under Giuseppe Garibaldi, the freedom fighter and
republican agitator; they wore a distinctively styled red shirt as part of their uniform
to show their connection to their countryman, whose partisans had worn such a shirt in
Italy. Other Italian nationals joined the guard as well, however, out of a feeling that
the Union's cause matched their own ideals of freedom and equal justice. They also viewed
the Northern ideology as closely- allied with the aims of Garibaldi and felt such alliance
lent credence to the great patriot's ideas, since they were clearly being adopted by other
nations.Source: The Civil War Society's "Encyclopedia of the
Civil War."